Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Maloney, and Members of the Subcommittee:

It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to testify before this Subcommittee for the first time and to discuss ways to enhance traditional enumeration methods. The Census Bureau has been trying continuously since at least 1950 to improve census enumeration procedures. That's what we do. We examine what worked well and what didn't work in each census and we apply rigorous testing and research practices to find better ways to make the census more accurate. One way that Census Bureau professionals believe we can make Census 2000 more accurate is to enhance traditional methods by using sampling and estimation techniques to eliminate the measured differential undercounts that have plagued each of the last six censuses. While there is disagreement on that enhancement, we are planning a number of other enhancements as well. I am encouraged by the fact that, while there are differences, we are all united in the goal of having an enumeration that is as complete as possible. The chairman's commitment to that is embodied in the America Counts Today initiative.

Just as having an accurate census is essential, it is also imperative that we come to quick agreement on one plan that the dedicated, hard-working professionals at the Census Bureau can carry out. With Census Day just a little over a year away and major census preparatory activities ongoing, we must look for ways to establish common ground so that we can move forward together. I pledge to you my willingness to do so.

I especially want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for providing me an occasion to speak to the issue of Post Census Local Review, and I will address that later in my testimony. First, I want to begin by honoring the request in your letter of invitation to discuss efforts relevant to increasing response rates and participation in Census 2000. Our first and most important effort is to put a census form in the hands of every single household in America, as well as enumerating those who live in group quarters (such as college dormitories) or who have no usual home. The Bureau evaluated the response problems of the 1990 census and established a testing and evaluation program designed to put in place significant improvements to enhance our ability to improve public response:

o First, the Bureau is using a questionnaire that is designed to be more user-friendly and that will be easier and simpler for respondents to understand and complete.

o Second, the Bureau will implement a multiple mail contact strategy, which will include a letter before delivering a questionnaire and a reminder card, in addition to the questionnaire itself.

o Third, respondents will have more ways to respond to the census than ever before. For example, through the Be Counted program, we will make census forms available in stores, schools, civic and community centers, and other locations so that people who think they have not been counted can respond. A well-publicized toll-free telephone number will be available for those who have questions. And householders will also have the option of responding via the Internet.

o Fourth, we have increased our partnership activities over previous censuses and are working with state, local, and tribal governments and community groups to advise us of opportunities to publicize Census 2000, help us update and correct census maps and our address list, and tell us where to put questionnaire assistance centers to help people who have difficulty completing the questionnaire.

o Fifth, we will, for the first time, use paid advertising to encourage the general population to complete and return their census questionnaires and to better target our messages to specific audiences that we believe may be difficult to enumerate.

In our operational plan for a census using traditional census-taking methods, which we submitted to the Congress on January 14, 1999, we noted that we plan to expand our partnership program and expand and enhance the paid advertising and promotion program. Both of these programs are geared toward greater public awareness of Census 2000, which in turn should lead to greater public response and cooperation.

o We plan to expand the partnership program to increase Bureau partnership staffing and assistance. This expansion will allow the Bureau to form additional partnerships with both nongovernmental organizations that represent historically hard-to-enumerate groups and with governmental entities, including tribal governments, that have not yet taken the opportunity to be included in the partnership program. Already, more than 10,000 partnership agreements have been signed. The expanded program includes "in-kind" funding to support partners by providing services, such as printing locally designed promotional materials for Census 2000.

o We plan to expand and enhance paid advertising and promotion by developing and implementing additional advertising messages. One additional message, which we will use before Census Day, will target information about community benefits to areas with historically low participation in the census. Another message will seek the public's cooperation with enumerators during the Nonresponse Followup operation. This is increasingly important now that we must make followup visits to 45 million housing units, instead of 30 million.

We also plan to expand the "Census in the Schools" program to allow all schools to participate instead of only those in selected areas. Nontraditional advertising methods also would be pursued. Fact sheets and promotional materials will be available on a larger scale with the expanded program. And finally, we plan to conduct special publicity events that would bring the Census 2000 message to communities across the Nation.

Now, I would like to briefly address each of the ten America Counts Today proposals, reserving Post Census Local Review, which I will discuss in some detail, until last.

First, hiring an additional 100,000 enumerators to work exclusively in the hardest to count communities. We will need to hire additional enumerators to conduct the additional follow up work required to comply with the Supreme Court's decision, and we anticipate that this number will be well in excess of 100,000. Without knowing what base is being used in calling for additional enumerators, it is difficult to know whether our plans are different or are in agreement.

Second, raise the advertising budget from $100 million to $400 million. We strongly agree that the advertising and promotion budgets will need to be increased. Our budget specifics are currently being developed, but as I said earlier we do expect to expand both our paid advertising and promotion campaign and our partnership program.

Third, conduct a second mailing of census forms to nonresponding housing units. As I described in my letter to you of February 2, 1999, the Bureau has decided not to implement either a targeted or blanket second mailing. We considered a targeted second mailing, but printing vendors told us they would require at least a month to send a second mailing targeted only to nonresponding housing units. A targeted second mailing would, thus, have significantly delayed the start of the Nonresponse Follow up operation, and our experience and research indicate that to ensure high quality and accuracy we need to begin this critical operation as soon as practicable after Census Day. Next, we considered a blanket second mailing, that is, mailing a second questionnaire to every housing unit, whether or not we had received a response to the original mailing. But a National Academy of Sciences panel advised us that there is considerable risk that a blanket second mailing could reduce the accuracy of the census. It could increase costs in dealing with duplicate forms, lead to massive duplication, and create adverse public reaction. Our Dress Rehearsal evaluations showed that a blanket second mailing did increase the overall mail response rate. However, the evaluations also indicate that about 40 percent of the households that mailed back a second questionnaire had also mailed back the initial questionnaire. Thus, the Dress Rehearsal processing had to be extended three weeks to handle the complexity introduced by the large volume of duplicate forms. For Census 2000, a workload of this magnitude would significantly delay data processing operations and potentially introduce significant errors into the data.

A final point I would make is that while a second mailing can help to increase mail response, there is no evidence that it reduces the undercount. In fact, if persons who mail back the first form are the easiest to count, those who would mail back a second form are the next easiest to count. They would almost entirely be included in the Nonresponse Followup operation and we do not expect great difficulty in enumerating them.

Fourth, allow welfare recipients, veterans, and American Indians to take temporary census jobs without losing their Federal benefits. We appreciate any effort to help broaden the potential applicant pool for temporary census jobs. Hiring the numbers of workers we will need to conduct Census 2000 will be a monumental challenge and we will need all the help we can get. We have already secured from the Office of Personnel Management a waiver for the Federal civilian and military retirees, similar to what we had in 1990. We have also secured a waiver from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for recipients of public housing and American Indian housing assistance. There currently are no waivers under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and it is our understanding that individual states and American Indian tribes would have to approve them consistent with the new welfare reform rules. We are working closely with the states to bring welfare recipients into our workforce and, indeed, to look for any other ways that would make it easier for people to come to work for us. We have already hired some 3,500 welfare recipients to work on our address-listing and Dress Rehearsal programs. This is the largest number of welfare-to-work employees in any agency or department of the federal government.

Fifth, enlist the help of Americorps volunteers to conduct promotion and outreach. We have already met with Americorps officials to obtain their endorsement and work out procedures for using their volunteers to help in the census effort. We are looking forward to being able to use these dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers to help us with efforts to reach all Americans.

Sixth, expand the "Census in the Schools" program. As I mentioned above, we agree that this program should be expanded. We plan to send information packets to every principal of every school in the country. In addition, we are doubling the number of direct contacts to individual classrooms. A result of this effort is an increase in the number of schools receiving information in the "hard-to-enumerate" areas of the country. In addition, we have expanded the program to include all Bureau of Indian Affairs Schools. About half of all those missed in the 1990 census were children. We welcome your support of this program because it is an important way to increase our outreach efforts to children whose parents do not speak English or who might not be motivated to answer the census questions for a variety of reasons.

Seventh, a matching grant program to local partnership groups and communities in the hardest to count areas. I am concerned that a matching grant program, particularly if all 39,000 local governmental entities would be eligible, would be very costly but also very complex to run. The Census Bureau has no experience administering a matching grant program. At this late date, it would be difficult to implement. Nevertheless, we do have experience working closely with our partners to achieve mutual goals. And we are doing that.

Eighth, publish forms in 33 languages. We will make language assistance guides available in over 30 languages, as we did in the last census, to help people respond to the census. In addition, we will make questionnaires available in five languages other than English. These include Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. We are also offering telephone questionnaire assistance in these five languages. Additionally, we plan to staff 15,000 questionnaire assistance centers in local communities to ensure we provide assistance in languages other than English to those who need it. This program reaches communities that speak more languages and dialects than the 33 listed in your proposed bill. Our research indicated that the program described above would be much more effective than a program that included printing questionnaires in 33 languages. Designing, testing, printing, and preparing to scan so many additional forms is not practical.

Ninth, triple the number of paid partnership specialists and target them to work in undercounted areas. Our initial plan called for 320 partnership specialists and the Census 2000 Operational Plan indicated that we anticipate increasing this number. I hope we can work together on funding for this activity.

Tenth, reinstating the Post Census Local Review. The Post Census Local Review program provided some limited benefit within the context of the 1990 census. But since early in this decade, the Census Bureau has been working to find a better way to improve the address list and to correct the deficiencies of the 1990 local review process. One such improvement is providing state, local, and tribal governments an earlier and more effective opportunity to correct the Census 2000 address list for their areas. We believe we have done that through the Local Update of Census Addresses, or LUCA, program made possible by the Census Address List Improvement Act that the Congress passed in 1994, which for the first time allows the Census Bureau to share its address list with its partners. And, I am pleased to report that we are looking at ways to modify our ongoing procedures for the Census 2000 address review process to respond to concerns raised by our governmental partners about newly constructed housing units.

As I said in my February 10 letter to you, the 1990 Post Census Local Review process cost too much on a per-case basis and took too much time relative to the extremely small number of people it added to the census. It came too late in the process and gained participation of only one-fourth of the nation's 39,000 governments. The 1990 Post Census Local Review added only one-twentieth of one percent to the overall population count, or about 125,000 persons. If we were to conduct such a program again, it would cost more and add even fewer people to the count than in 1990 because it would be redundant to the precensus address list review activities that are already underway.

The address list review process the Census Bureau has designed for Census 2000, with congressional and participant encouragement and support, is innovative, responsive to our partners, and efficient. I believe the LUCA program thus far has been a success. We have encountered problems, but because we started early, we have had time to make refinements and correct the problems. Through our extensive outreach efforts, twice as many local and tribal governments are participating in LUCA as participated in the 1990 Post Census Local Review; those governments cover about 85 percent of all addresses. So, thus far, response to the program has been great.

We have heard increasing concerns from our governmental partners that housing units newly constructed in the months before Census Day may not be adequately accounted for under our existing plan. Any benefits from a Post Census Local Review would derive particularly from local governments' information on newly constructed units in their jurisdiction. Such information can and should be used in the census, but much earlier in the process than would occur under Post Census Local Review.

To address these concerns, we have developed a plan that we are refining in consultation with members of the Secretary of Commerce's 2000 Census Advisory Committee. Although

these plans are still being refined, we have developed a program that will allow local and tribal governments an additional opportunity to review the address list for their area starting in mid-January 2000 and ending on Census Day, April 1, 2000. The purpose of this review is to bring to our attention any newly constructed housing units that are not on the Census 2000 mailing list. This opportunity will be offered to all governments in which the Census Bureau will have the U.S. Postal Service deliver Census 2000 questionnaires--approximately 94 million addresses. Local and tribal governments will have this opportunity whether they participated in LUCA or not.

Any units that are identified during this procedure will be verified during our coverage improvement field activities, and enumerated if they, in fact, were occupied on April 1. This opportunity for local and tribal governments to bring new construction to our attention will complement our planned check by the U.S. Postal Service that is scheduled to be conducted mid-January to mid-February 2000 and that also will result in the addition of new addresses to our list. In the more rural areas of the country, our plan already requires census enumerators to look for newly constructed units at the time they deliver the questionnaires or conduct the enumeration.

In addition, we have established a program to validate the boundaries for every local and tribal government in the United States. As we do before every decennial census, in late 1999 we will provide maps to them all showing their latest reported boundaries and ask that they provide any corrections needed to make them accurate as of January 1, 2000, the official boundary date for Census 2000. Then we will provide a set of maps showing each government that we incorporated their changes. This is unlike 1990, when governments did not see the results of their efforts until after the census. These boundary validation maps will be sent in the late spring of 2000 and we will seek any residual corrections by early summer of 2000.

That brings me to what I believe is the critical weakness of H.R. 472. It would mandate a program that Census Bureau professionals believe will not effectively and efficiently contribute to the overall accuracy of the census. The bill proposes a Post Census Local Review process that is very similar to the 1990 census process and that would face the same problems that the 1990 process faced and that I have described above. The bill does make two changes to the 1990 Post Census Local Review; it gives local officials more time to conduct the review and provides an opportunity for feedback. But because of the extensive address list review program that will take place before the census, including the new program to add newly constructed units that will carry up to Census Day, there will be nothing left for local officials to contribute in terms of adding housing units to the census. They will receive essentially the same address list they received in January. And this unproductive review, under the bill, would be conducted late in the process, extending even later than the 1990 program because it would give local officials three times as much review time as they had in 1990. The bill does nothing to improve upon the 1990 process. We have looked at ways to improve that process and concluded that an earlier review and input from local governments process would be most efficient. That is what we have designed.

In closing, I want to emphasize that the census clock is ticking. In just 366 days, the first Census 2000 forms will be delivered. Given the lateness of the hour, we must acknowledge the hard reality that we cannot take a chance on untested operations or late additions. The most we can do is to modify already existing operations to enhance quality where that is possible, and we continue to look at ways to do so. The largest peacetime mobilization in U.S. history must go forward relying on the considered professional judgment of the career scientific and operational experts at the Census Bureau. I look forward to working with this Subcommittee to achieve that goal.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I will be pleased to answer any questions.